At Reason, Zuri Davis runs through the failures, bit by bit, of how Tennessee cops searching for a 16-year-old suspected of breaking into cars managed to not merely end up pointing guns at a naked woman in her own home after breaking down her door because she didn’t open it within 30 seconds, but it ended up being the wrong house.
Several minutes later, the officers told Hines they had the wrong home.
How is that possible?
The police were looking for a 16-year-old in connection with some vehicle burglaries. Interim Chief John Drake confirmed in a Wednesday press conference that the address MNPD used to serve the search warrant was outdated. The department obtained the information through the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, which has not provided updates on residents since 2018, due to privacy concerns. Hines had only lived in the apartment for six months, and she had no connection to the teen.
Reaction to this cherry atop a banana split of screw-ups has reflected a curious thing. Without anyone really arguing that the cops weren’t wrong, particularly since they were clearly wrong, the fiasco has been chalked up to a “reasonable mistake.” After all, the police relied on the Housing Authority’s information, and while they should have known it was stale, such reliance wasn’t unreasonable. So, yeah, it was wrong and bad, but it was within the realm of an understandable mistake, a reasonable error.
No. No, no, no. There is no such thing as a reasonable error to rely on data that’s unverified, whether because it’s stale or because it’s simply there but unreliable. When the police obtain a warrant, whether to break into a home or seize a person, there is an affirmative duty to ascertain that the information provided in support of that warrant is both accurate and fresh. That some random clerk somewhere entered it into some governmental database at some point in the past doesn’t elevate whatever the computer screen says into sufficiently verified proof to violate the sanctity of a person’s home or body.
In the past, the basis for breaking into a home would ordinarily be direct information, whether from observation, a reliable informant or investigation that provided verification that the location was the right one, the home was the place they wanted and the person they sought could be found there. Today, we live in an age of databases, and we’ve come to believe in their efficacy, their reliability, even though we know nothing about them. We don’t know who input the data. We don’t know whether the data they were inputting was accurate or just some crap on a form. We don’t know whether they were diligent in their entry or a slacker, or worse.
We don’t know a damn thing about how the data got there. We only know it’s there. And for most of us, that’s good enough because there isn’t much else we could do to ascertain the reliability of the data. But then, we’re not cops and our use of the data isn’t to break down the door of some woman’s home. Even if Azaria Hines had been fully clothed as police rammed down her door, pointed guns at her (which occasionally “accidentally” fire), it still was the wrong house.
Is it understandable that the cops tried to shortcut their responsibility to make sure that the house they would break into was the place where their heinous 16-year-old thief lived? Is it understandable that they relied on a Housing Authority database, given that it is the government just like them, and it had the info right there on the screen, and exactly how much time and effort would one expect the cops to put in to find some kid suspected of a small-potatoes crime like stealing car stereos. I mean, really, what would you expect?
If they’re going to get a warrant, break down a door, violate a person’s home and physical well-being, you’re damned right they should be expected to verify the accuracy, the freshness, of their location beforehand. They should be expected to do their job and do it right. Relying on stale data is inexcusable, even though this time Azaria Hines didn’t die because of stale data and lazy cops.
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Julius Caesar.
“Caesaris uxori si exceptione maiorem.“
The explanation for this did not ring true. It is the place covered by the warrant or it isn’t. If the officers were given a warrant based on stale information, but for the house they raided, that isn’t on them, but on the idiot that submitted the warrant application.
That’s not quite how warrants usually work. The cops make the application, with one putting his name to the app while the rest of his “team” waits for it to be signed so they can do the dirty work. But they team is in it together, regardless of whose name is on the app.
And the warrant was for that address. It’s not like the cops broke down the door of the house next door (or on the next block), which also happens far too often, because they didn’t look at the warrant (or the house number) carefully.
Damn lucky she wasn’t shot because the bathwater was soapy and there might have been a wepon.
SHG,
I told a portion of this story in 2013 at my Herc site. But it may be worth repeating. (Or not.)
In the late ’70s or early ’80s, after a court appointment, I got a sociopath off multiple burglary and rape charges based upon the fact that the search warrant address was erroneous but only barely so. The authorities had been authorized to search a small town apartment “complex” with funky addresses. The warrant said OK to toss the residence at 2014, but my client’s correct address was 2014½.
As I wrote in 2013, “By that time, I had come to hate [the sociopath] and I still do. If he is not already doing so now, and although I am an agnostic in religious terms, I fervently pray that he rots in hell.”
Cops can be, and frequently are, lazy and stupid. Sometimes, they are reasonably diligent but simply unlucky. What does this mean? How the fuck should I know!
All the best.
RGK
Some days it’s a sociopath. Some days, it’s Breonna Taylor. We do it for the sociopath so it doesn’t happen to Breonna Taylor. Except it did anyway.
But the cops fully meant to search Taylor’s place, where they claimed to reasonably expect to find parcels with drugs.
Judge,
Sounds like a good reason to have the wrong address painted on the curb in front.
You hate the guy? I bet he thinks you are the best attorney in the World. It’s always good to have friends in low places given you’re a non-believer.
–LT
Sam Lowry: It’s not the machine. There’s a mismatch on the personnel code numbers… Tuttle should have had £31.06, debited against his account, not Buttle!
Kurtzman: [horrified] Oh my God, a mistake!
Sam Lowry: Well at least it’s not ours.
Kurtzman: [eagerly] Isn’t it? Whose is it?
Sam Lowry: Information Retrieval.
Kurtzman: [smiling] Oh, good!
Damn right. Databases, and reading the contents thereof, are what I make my living from, and Garbage In, Garbage Out should be the first thing anyone with a brain in their head should be careful of. Amongst the other things computers can do, faithfully replicating the mistakes us humans can make is a major feature.
If the end user saw the number of times I fucked things up before it *appeared* to work (which is as good as it gets, absent better information), they might take a more thoughtful approach to basing decisions on things that appear on a screen.
But they won’t. Bummer! Stevie Wonder should have sung “If you believe in things that you don’t understand, then *they* suffer” – would have been the most prescient lyric ever.